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Blog 1: Gears⚙️

  • Nov 8, 2024
  • 4 min read

Updated: Nov 17, 2024

Welcome backk! 🤗🤗

..to my first blog for this

Chemical Product Design & Development (CPDD) module


My goal for this module would be to obtain the necessary skills (e.g Arduino programming💻) to build our algae bioreactor🦠 prototype from ICPD module, as I learn more about chemical product design along with my team


Now, moving on to Practical 1!!


*hmmm something's wrong with wix formatting, I have no choice but to put images like this, sorry☹️

Practical 1: Gears


Definitions & formulae

Gear module, m:

Indicates size of gear teeth, larger M = larger teeth⚙️

Pitch Circular Diameter, PCD:

Diameter of the pitch circle, an imaginary circle passing through middle of all teeth🫥


No. of teeth, Z: Number of teeth


Relationship between all of them🫂:



Gear ratio (aka speed ratio):

Ratio between no. of teeth on two gears meshed together

Rotational speed, rpm:

Rotations/revolutions per minute🔁


Torque, T:

Moment acting about a longitudinal axis


Relationship between the rpm & T:

How it's derived🤓📝:


Okay enough about that, now for the ✨activities✨


During the practical, we constructed this hand-operated fan:


..and for this blog, I have to propose a better design for the fan🤔🤔

😭I had no idea how to improve it, so I went to do some research and found this🤩:



For the original design, the handle often jams so you would have to re-adjust the handle and time your squeezes just to keep the fan spinning😤😤

With this new design, the fan works as long as you keep pressing/squeezing on the handle🤩


Here are the sketches of the design:

The gears inside the fan
Holes on the fan cover for better airflow

I modified the fan cover since the one in the video looked like it was blocking a lot of airflow from behind the fan👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼, so I added holes to allow more air to pass through💨👍🏼




Another activity was to arrange some gears⚙️ to lift a water bottle⬆️


At first, thanks to Muhsin who calculated a gear ratio of 26.67, we could already start placing the gears onto the board..


However, we starting doubting ourselves since we did not know whether we got the highest possible ratio, so we tried re-arranging the gears, but still ended up with 26.67 for 3 different layouts😭😭


That was until...we were told that 26.67 IS the highest we could get🤦🏼‍♂️🥲


Here is the calculation of the gear ratio📝:


This video👈🏼 may help you understand better,

but in summary:

there are compound & idler gears used, Z2 and Z3 are combined as a compound gear⚙️⚙️

Z1 is "driving" Z2, while Z3 is driving Z4, so both ratios have to be calculated, then multiplied🤯

Idler gears like Z11 are "ignored" since it is just between Z10 driving Z12



Here's how we arranged the gears:


Did you know?


There are 19 other possible layouts 🤯



me neither, I just made that up😴



*edit: there are actually only 8 distinct layouts in total, for a gear ratio of 26.67, here's my explanation:

Things to consider:

  1. The gears can only be arranged with 2 "layers" like shown above

  2. The crank and winch are always first and last in the layout, and on the first "layer"

  3. The shape of the gears, some layouts don't work just because the gears won't fit ☹️

    e.g. The 20T part of the 20T-40T gear needs an idler if it is placed at the end to reach the winch, but the 20T part of the 20-30T gear can mesh with the winch

  4. The 2 idler gears can be swapped around to create another layout🙌🏼

Yes I had to draw it out but, assuming idler gears can work on the 2nd "layer"..

I ended up with 4 layouts (total), factoring in point no. 4, that makes 8 different layouts in total🔥

..not as large as something like 4790001600 layouts...I'm getting sidetracked, now back to the blog⬇️



..more calculations, to find number of rotations needed to lift the bottle up by 20cm:


now let's watch the gears turn🔥

✨featuring: Muhsin, Fiona, Rakshan(cameraman📸)



..and that's all for Practical 1🙌🏼🙌🏼,

time for the learning reflection🙃


Learning Reflection


I would say the main thing that I learnt was to have more confidence in my own skills😅😅


Mostly because when the lecturer & Technical Executive were asking questions about our gear layout🤔, since they have more skill & experience than us, it made us doubt our own answer😭

but I guess they were, in a way, just "testing us"🧐


I believe that if we kept with the original gear layout from the start, we would have finished the activities earlier, leaving more time to do the other questions (more productive🔥😎)


Also, I recently came across this video about gears in a car differential🚗

(the video may be old, but I really like how well explained it is🔥)

..and it features bevel gears, then I found out that there is a whole variety of gears🤩, each of them with different benefits/applications🛠️


I definitely still have a lot to learn about gears🤓⚙️

the different types of gears, what each of them do, how it's used in our daily lives..🤔

and I hope to make use of what I've learnt from this, mainly the problem-solving skills, in the future if I ever end up using gears again, or even in other activities outside of this module




🤔🤔I wonder how many times I've said "gears" 😂🤣

. . .





..okayy that's all for this blog, see you in the next one!👋🏼👋🏼




References:


Other useful videos:

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